Read: November 2015
Pages: 496
Sometimes a book comes to right at the time it is most relevant to your life or to your understanding of the world. Sometimes a book comes to you before you're ready for it, and you only realize later that you should have paid more attention. And sometimes a book comes into your life too late.
I've been meaning to read Paris 1919 ever since it came out in 2000 to stunningly good reviews. A copy even entered my house as a loan to Harvey in the intervening years....but I didn't get around to reading it before it departed back to its owner. I finally read it this year and thought: this would have seemed more relevant in the '90s or the Naughties, when the Wall had more recently come down, and the Bosnian war was fresh in everyone's minds. The book has a lot to say about the ethnic and political divisions in the Balkans in particular, and understanding the post-WWI history of the region is quite illuminating in terms of understanding the events of the 90s.
But saying that I read Paris 1919 too late is too glib. I'm sure it made a much bigger splash at the time of its release because of its discussion of the Balkans, and the immediate relevance of that history to then-current events. But the book doesn't just talk about the Balkans. World War I really was a global war. It touched everywhere from Europe to the Middle East to the Far East, and understanding that war and its impact can help one better understand those regions and their history. In fact, reading Paris 1919 even helped me better understand The Windup Bird Chronicle! not to mention Lawrence of Arabia (the movie, that is). It also gave me some fascinating insights into the political background to the founding of the state of Israel.
The book itself delves into detail about the discussions at the Paris Peace Conference, and discusses in depth the personality, motivations, and political manueverings of all of the major players. It's hard not to come away with an acute understanding of just how doomed that intensive 6 month period of "peace-making" was. Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, and Georges Clemenceau between them tried to settle the concerns of many of the peoples of the world. It was a task beyond any such group of men.
Sunday 29 November 2015
Monday 2 November 2015
The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Read: Sept 1 to Oct. 2
Pages:
All of Murakami's books say "author of The Windup Bird Chronicle" on their covers. My sister tells me that The Windup Bird Chronicle is on a list of "100 books to read before you die" that she downloaded from the internet. The book was highly recommended to me by a friend.
So I read it this fall, after an abortive attempt to read the e-book version.
What is the book about? Did I enjoy it? What insights did the book give me? What thoughts did it spark?
Those are the kinds of questions that I think about as I'm reading a book that I'm about to review on this blog. But as it turns out, for The Windup Bird Chronicle, those are all difficult questions.
The first question was the most difficult, oddly.
I could start by summarizing the contents of the book. It's a novel set in contemporary Japan that follows about a year in the life of an unemployed legal assistant who lives in the suburbs of Tokyo. It's told in the first person, and has fantastic and absurd elements.
But ....what is it "about"?
One of the blurbs on the cover claims that it's about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria that preceded the Second World War.
There are several characters in the book whose lives were fundamentally affected by Japan's wartime occupation of mainland China: an elderly fortuneteller who appears only in flashback, an elderly retired schoolteacher who brings our protagonist a puzzling legacy and recounts his wartime experiences at some length, and Malta and Creta Kano, pivotal characters who as children fled the recapture of Nanking by the Chinese.
But if the book is about this invasion and occupation, why are only secondary characters affected by these events? Why does the story follow the life of an aimless former salaryman, and why is the plot driven by his relationship with his wife, his lost cat, his teenage neighbour, his annoying brother-in-law, and the woman he meets while sitting in a square in downtown Tokyo? And why is the book called The Windup Bird Chronicle, after the bird who briefly perches in his backyard tree and makes a noise like it is winding up the world?
Not to mention that I'm not convinced that the stories of wartime Manchuria are meant to be taken literally. The story of the dry well reeks of metaphor, and the odour only increases when the protagonist himself finds a dry well, and enters it seeking (literally?) enlightenment.
In fact, the whole book is shot through with metaphor, dreams, dream-like experiences, coincidences, and obviously meaningful items and events that somehow never cohere into meaningfulness.
In other words -- no, I don't know what the book is about. But the hints seem so numerous and so obviously planted that my failure to understand seems like a personal failing -- or conversely, beside the point? I can't decide which.
Did I like the book?
Again, this is an oddly difficult question. I read the first half in dutiful portions, more because I meant to finish it than because I couldn't put it down. But at the same time it was oddly compelling. The story is told in the first person, in straightforward prose, in a very matter-of-fact tone. Not a lot happens. His wife goes to work, returns late, and doesn't want to eat the supper he's prepared. He searches for the lost cat in the dead-end alley behind his house, and discovers instead an abandoned house with an overgrown yard that doesn't contain his cat -- though the bored teenager across the alley claims that she sees a lot of cats there. An anonymous woman caller with a very familiar voice calls mid day and initiates phone sex without warning. He meets a psychic by appointment in a downtown restaurant, who recognizes him even though he can't find and therefore doesn't wear the polka dot tie he was supposed to put on so that she will be able to identify him. He dreams about a sexual encounter with a woman wearing his wife's dress, and then later discovers that the woman he dreamt about also remembers the dream.
Eventually I realized that I was allowed to enjoy the experience, even if I didn't really understand what was going on, and my reading accelerated. Perhaps because it seemed that if I only read a bit more, things would start to come together and the whole book would make sense....
What insights did the book give me? What thoughts did it spark?
There was a great quote from the protagonist that I meant to pull out and include here, before my copy of the book vanished into the chaos of my current home reno. It went something like "I don't enjoy going to modern art movies, because as you watch them, things just happen." It seemed as if the author was making an ironic nod to his audience.
I'm not sure what else to say. I did enjoy reading it. More than a month later, the book has stuck with me, and as I write about it I continue the effort to pull everything together in my head. (Was the anonymous woman on the phone actually Kumiko, his wife? Why are all of our protagonist's emotional reactions so muted? He treats the teenaged neighbour no differently after she takes actions that could easily have lead to his death. What's the significance of that particular brand of whisky, and why does it keep reappearing throughout the book?)
I might recommend it to a friend myself. But I'm not sure. What would I say if they came back to me and asked me what I thought about it myself? Or if they asked me to explain the book to them? Or perhaps worse, what if they explained the book to me? :-)
Hm...following the ideal that excellence only follows egoless effort, I suppose I'd have to recommend the book. It was novel. It held my attention. It entertained me. It made me think. And maybe, just maybe, the person to whom I recommended it would explain it to me afterwards, and I'd learn something.
So recommended, at least to readers who are willing to work at their fiction.
Pages:
All of Murakami's books say "author of The Windup Bird Chronicle" on their covers. My sister tells me that The Windup Bird Chronicle is on a list of "100 books to read before you die" that she downloaded from the internet. The book was highly recommended to me by a friend.
So I read it this fall, after an abortive attempt to read the e-book version.
What is the book about? Did I enjoy it? What insights did the book give me? What thoughts did it spark?
Those are the kinds of questions that I think about as I'm reading a book that I'm about to review on this blog. But as it turns out, for The Windup Bird Chronicle, those are all difficult questions.
The first question was the most difficult, oddly.
I could start by summarizing the contents of the book. It's a novel set in contemporary Japan that follows about a year in the life of an unemployed legal assistant who lives in the suburbs of Tokyo. It's told in the first person, and has fantastic and absurd elements.
But ....what is it "about"?
One of the blurbs on the cover claims that it's about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria that preceded the Second World War.
There are several characters in the book whose lives were fundamentally affected by Japan's wartime occupation of mainland China: an elderly fortuneteller who appears only in flashback, an elderly retired schoolteacher who brings our protagonist a puzzling legacy and recounts his wartime experiences at some length, and Malta and Creta Kano, pivotal characters who as children fled the recapture of Nanking by the Chinese.
But if the book is about this invasion and occupation, why are only secondary characters affected by these events? Why does the story follow the life of an aimless former salaryman, and why is the plot driven by his relationship with his wife, his lost cat, his teenage neighbour, his annoying brother-in-law, and the woman he meets while sitting in a square in downtown Tokyo? And why is the book called The Windup Bird Chronicle, after the bird who briefly perches in his backyard tree and makes a noise like it is winding up the world?
Not to mention that I'm not convinced that the stories of wartime Manchuria are meant to be taken literally. The story of the dry well reeks of metaphor, and the odour only increases when the protagonist himself finds a dry well, and enters it seeking (literally?) enlightenment.
In fact, the whole book is shot through with metaphor, dreams, dream-like experiences, coincidences, and obviously meaningful items and events that somehow never cohere into meaningfulness.
In other words -- no, I don't know what the book is about. But the hints seem so numerous and so obviously planted that my failure to understand seems like a personal failing -- or conversely, beside the point? I can't decide which.
Did I like the book?
Again, this is an oddly difficult question. I read the first half in dutiful portions, more because I meant to finish it than because I couldn't put it down. But at the same time it was oddly compelling. The story is told in the first person, in straightforward prose, in a very matter-of-fact tone. Not a lot happens. His wife goes to work, returns late, and doesn't want to eat the supper he's prepared. He searches for the lost cat in the dead-end alley behind his house, and discovers instead an abandoned house with an overgrown yard that doesn't contain his cat -- though the bored teenager across the alley claims that she sees a lot of cats there. An anonymous woman caller with a very familiar voice calls mid day and initiates phone sex without warning. He meets a psychic by appointment in a downtown restaurant, who recognizes him even though he can't find and therefore doesn't wear the polka dot tie he was supposed to put on so that she will be able to identify him. He dreams about a sexual encounter with a woman wearing his wife's dress, and then later discovers that the woman he dreamt about also remembers the dream.
Eventually I realized that I was allowed to enjoy the experience, even if I didn't really understand what was going on, and my reading accelerated. Perhaps because it seemed that if I only read a bit more, things would start to come together and the whole book would make sense....
What insights did the book give me? What thoughts did it spark?
There was a great quote from the protagonist that I meant to pull out and include here, before my copy of the book vanished into the chaos of my current home reno. It went something like "I don't enjoy going to modern art movies, because as you watch them, things just happen." It seemed as if the author was making an ironic nod to his audience.
I'm not sure what else to say. I did enjoy reading it. More than a month later, the book has stuck with me, and as I write about it I continue the effort to pull everything together in my head. (Was the anonymous woman on the phone actually Kumiko, his wife? Why are all of our protagonist's emotional reactions so muted? He treats the teenaged neighbour no differently after she takes actions that could easily have lead to his death. What's the significance of that particular brand of whisky, and why does it keep reappearing throughout the book?)
I might recommend it to a friend myself. But I'm not sure. What would I say if they came back to me and asked me what I thought about it myself? Or if they asked me to explain the book to them? Or perhaps worse, what if they explained the book to me? :-)
Hm...following the ideal that excellence only follows egoless effort, I suppose I'd have to recommend the book. It was novel. It held my attention. It entertained me. It made me think. And maybe, just maybe, the person to whom I recommended it would explain it to me afterwards, and I'd learn something.
So recommended, at least to readers who are willing to work at their fiction.
Sunday 13 September 2015
A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollestonecraft
Published: 1792
Mary Wollestonecraft was one of the historical heroines of"Second Wave" feminism, identified as "the first feminist", and her defining book A Vindication of the Rights of Women lauded as "the first" published work of feminist writing. The "firsts" weren't true, of course, but in the early days of academic feminism the claims drew a lot of attention to Wollestonecraft. Wollestonecraft was certainly an early feminist in the Western tradition, and was unique in her era as a woman who supported herself by her writing. She was also the mother of Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Wollestonecrafts' own works presage Romanticism.
As you might imagine, Wollestonecraft has been the subject of many biographies.
I'm no longer sure why she initially drew my attention, but at this point I've read something like four of those biographies. Wollestonecraft was a fascinating -- and difficult -- person. No surprise. The ordinary, less-stubborn, and more practical middle-class woman of the late eighteenth century became wives. Failing marriage, they became dependents of their married siblings, or perhaps governesses or paid companions. The truly unfortunate presumably became prostitutes and/or died in penury. All of those fates were intolerable to Wollestonecraft. Some combination of determination and luck allowed her to transcend her failed career as a governess and her failed career as a school proprietress, and allowed her to become a professional writer.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is by far her most famous work. Despite its title, it's not really a general justification of rights for women. It's a treatise on education, and in particular, women's education. Its title is a product of its time, and a product of marketing. Wollestonecraft was writing in the immediate aftermath of the French revolution of 1789, and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. More particularly, her title echoes that of her own earlier work, A Vindication of the Rights of Man, which was written as a hot rebuttal of the conservative Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. That book made her reputation and gave her a public profile. It was natural to title her next book in such a way as to remind readers of that fact.
Is the book relevant today? I bookmarked a few quotes that could have been written yesterday. But overall, its arguments aren't ones that one would make today, at least in the Western world. In Vindication, Wollestonecraft argues that women's intellectual and moral inferiority is a result of their ignorance. When girls were educated at all, their education focused on domestic skills and pleasing men. The result: ignorant, petty, and vain women who were unfit for their natural roles as mothers, teachers of children, and companions to men. Worst of all, women were unfit to live moral lives. The cure that Wollestonecraft advocated was to educate girls alongside boys, teaching all children the same range of historical, philosophical, and religious subjects.
Is there any reason to read Vindications today? It's certainly an important historical work. If you're interested in Mary Wollestonecraft, it is an essential complement to reading about her life. And like the Claudine novels, Vindications throws unintended light on the era in which it was written.
Wollestonecraft was raised in a family that skimmed the bottom of the middle class through the improvidence of her father. She worked as a governess for aristocratic Irish families. She operated a school for middle class girls, and she circulated in intellectual circles both in England and later in Revolutionary France. She was, of course, acquainted with servants, with whom she lived for most of her life. The portrait that she paints of women's lives was drawn from her own experience. It was designed to resonate with her audience as plausible background to her arguments for women's education.
It's upsetting.
The most telling part is that Wollestonecraft didn't argue that women would be just as able as men, given the same education and opportunities. Either she didn't believe that herself, or she thought that such an argument was be too far beyond the pale to be included in a serious work of analysis and advocacy -- even as she demonstrated her own learning via extensive in-line references to various learned sources throughout her work.
And even if you're familiar with period literature, you don't get the texture of everyday life from Jane Austen. Wollestonecraft paints a world where men automatically patronized women or preyed upon them....or both. Where women were on the whole ignorant, gossipy, scheming, weak, and silly...because middle class and aristocratic women had no outlet for their energies, no cultivation for their minds, and were degraded by the necessity of obedience first to their fathers, and then to their husbands. Even 'progressive' contemporary thinkers like Rousseau valued women almost exclusively for their appearance.
Yes, Wollestonecraft was writing a polemic. But from my young experiences working various blue collar jobs, I found that gossip, opinion, and petty scheming are much closer to the surface among people with less education. Education really does broaden one's perspective -- or at least teaches you to moderate your less attractive instincts. In a world where women's education was discouraged or blocked, I can well imagine that her world looked much as she described.
The moral of the story: if you're a woman, it's hard not to believe in historical progress. Female time travellers take note! Visiting different eras would be fascinating, but if you're looking to settle somewhere, the modern era rocks.
Mary Wollestonecraft was one of the historical heroines of"Second Wave" feminism, identified as "the first feminist", and her defining book A Vindication of the Rights of Women lauded as "the first" published work of feminist writing. The "firsts" weren't true, of course, but in the early days of academic feminism the claims drew a lot of attention to Wollestonecraft. Wollestonecraft was certainly an early feminist in the Western tradition, and was unique in her era as a woman who supported herself by her writing. She was also the mother of Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Wollestonecrafts' own works presage Romanticism.
As you might imagine, Wollestonecraft has been the subject of many biographies.
I'm no longer sure why she initially drew my attention, but at this point I've read something like four of those biographies. Wollestonecraft was a fascinating -- and difficult -- person. No surprise. The ordinary, less-stubborn, and more practical middle-class woman of the late eighteenth century became wives. Failing marriage, they became dependents of their married siblings, or perhaps governesses or paid companions. The truly unfortunate presumably became prostitutes and/or died in penury. All of those fates were intolerable to Wollestonecraft. Some combination of determination and luck allowed her to transcend her failed career as a governess and her failed career as a school proprietress, and allowed her to become a professional writer.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is by far her most famous work. Despite its title, it's not really a general justification of rights for women. It's a treatise on education, and in particular, women's education. Its title is a product of its time, and a product of marketing. Wollestonecraft was writing in the immediate aftermath of the French revolution of 1789, and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. More particularly, her title echoes that of her own earlier work, A Vindication of the Rights of Man, which was written as a hot rebuttal of the conservative Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. That book made her reputation and gave her a public profile. It was natural to title her next book in such a way as to remind readers of that fact.
Is the book relevant today? I bookmarked a few quotes that could have been written yesterday. But overall, its arguments aren't ones that one would make today, at least in the Western world. In Vindication, Wollestonecraft argues that women's intellectual and moral inferiority is a result of their ignorance. When girls were educated at all, their education focused on domestic skills and pleasing men. The result: ignorant, petty, and vain women who were unfit for their natural roles as mothers, teachers of children, and companions to men. Worst of all, women were unfit to live moral lives. The cure that Wollestonecraft advocated was to educate girls alongside boys, teaching all children the same range of historical, philosophical, and religious subjects.
Is there any reason to read Vindications today? It's certainly an important historical work. If you're interested in Mary Wollestonecraft, it is an essential complement to reading about her life. And like the Claudine novels, Vindications throws unintended light on the era in which it was written.
Wollestonecraft was raised in a family that skimmed the bottom of the middle class through the improvidence of her father. She worked as a governess for aristocratic Irish families. She operated a school for middle class girls, and she circulated in intellectual circles both in England and later in Revolutionary France. She was, of course, acquainted with servants, with whom she lived for most of her life. The portrait that she paints of women's lives was drawn from her own experience. It was designed to resonate with her audience as plausible background to her arguments for women's education.
It's upsetting.
The most telling part is that Wollestonecraft didn't argue that women would be just as able as men, given the same education and opportunities. Either she didn't believe that herself, or she thought that such an argument was be too far beyond the pale to be included in a serious work of analysis and advocacy -- even as she demonstrated her own learning via extensive in-line references to various learned sources throughout her work.
And even if you're familiar with period literature, you don't get the texture of everyday life from Jane Austen. Wollestonecraft paints a world where men automatically patronized women or preyed upon them....or both. Where women were on the whole ignorant, gossipy, scheming, weak, and silly...because middle class and aristocratic women had no outlet for their energies, no cultivation for their minds, and were degraded by the necessity of obedience first to their fathers, and then to their husbands. Even 'progressive' contemporary thinkers like Rousseau valued women almost exclusively for their appearance.
Yes, Wollestonecraft was writing a polemic. But from my young experiences working various blue collar jobs, I found that gossip, opinion, and petty scheming are much closer to the surface among people with less education. Education really does broaden one's perspective -- or at least teaches you to moderate your less attractive instincts. In a world where women's education was discouraged or blocked, I can well imagine that her world looked much as she described.
The moral of the story: if you're a woman, it's hard not to believe in historical progress. Female time travellers take note! Visiting different eras would be fascinating, but if you're looking to settle somewhere, the modern era rocks.
Friday 11 September 2015
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey
Pages: 300
Published: 1949
I've read and enjoyed a couple of other books by Josephine Tey:
Published: 1949
I've read and enjoyed a couple of other books by Josephine Tey:
But not every classic book is worth reading, not even if the author generally amuses. Perhaps it was just my mood, but this book grated.
I suppose that for a class system to survive, the people who benefit from it need to believe that it's justified.
The heroines of this piece are a wrongly-accused pair of spinsters: a mother and daughter of good family but limited means. Their case is taken up by a middle-aged lawyer, who succumbs to the appeal that he should help them, not because of his expertise, but because he's "one of the right sort", that is, of the right class. The villain comes from a lower class, and is in fact adopted. Upon investigation, we learn that the villain's mother was of poor character. It all makes perfect sense: after all, bad blood will out.
There's more, much more. Including the interesting fact that you can always tell a murderer, because they inevitably have their eyes set slightly asymmetrically in their sockets. But I draw a veil over the rest of the book. I think you get the idea.
The actual mystery is somewhat novel, and is apparently based on an historical event: it deals with an accusation of kidnapping, and the suspense involved is the attempt of the investigator to clear the afore-mentioned polite spinster and her mother. The suspense would be greater if there were any suspicion that they weren't -- OF COURSE-- innocent, given their social class.
The only part that made me laugh was the heartfelt question of the struggling spinster, trying to clear her name. "What do people do who have no money?" she asks, as she struggles to pay the expenses involved with the investigation. The question is meant to elicit sympathy.
But the answer is that they are convicted both by the courts and by public opinion. No one reaches out to help them, and no one believes them, as the country lawyer believes the spinster. Those with no money at all are obviously inherently criminal.
Monday 17 August 2015
Claudine at School by Colette
Started: 12 July
Finished: 25 July
Pages: 187
I first read Colette when took a class in 20th Century French Literature in translation, offered by the French department at the University of Saskatchewan back in the 1980s. I think that must be why I picked up a second-hand copy of The Claudine Novels at some point, and why I finally pulled it down off the shelf earlier this month when I was looking for something to read.
More or less by coincidence, I also started reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollestonecraft and a book of SF short stories by Judith Merrill at almost the same time. Claudine at School was written in the 1890s, Vindications was written about a hundred years earlier in 1792, while the Judith Merrill short stories were written between the late 1940s and the 1970s. All three are by and about middle class women.
I feel a bit as if I'm starting a "compare and contrast" essay. But perhaps I'll desist, given that I haven't yet finished Vindications or the Merrill stories, and it's been more than 25 years since I wrote my last literary essay. I will say that reading the three books together felt a bit like time travel: as I write about the other books perhaps I'll pull a bit of commentary together.
Of the books, Collette's is not self-consciously a commentary on women and women's lives. This is her first novel, written as a very young married woman, to please a demanding older husband who eventually got the book published under his own name. Her later novels explore women's lives, but this one simply describes the life of a teenaged girl attending her local village school.
Claudine at School is described as "charming" on Wikipedia and in its introduction. And so it is. It's a slice of a lost time, set in a quiet village where a visit from a local politician is enough to justify an all day program of welcoming songs by schoolchildren dressed in their best clothes and speeches by local dignitaries. It's a time when girls from village families might get an education so that they could train as school teachers, girls from not-so-ambitous families might snatch kisses from boys in the forest, while girls from good families like Claudine might go to school solely to keep themselves amused while waiting for their lives to begin. The book's not quaint: the school girls and school teachers leap off the page as real, complicated, squabbling people. And because the book was originally written as soft porn (Colette's husband kept nagging her to make the contents 'hot'), it reads as surprisingly modern. (Lesbians, oh my.)
Would I recommend it? Colette's later books, like The Captive are more interesting. Claudine feels more like backstory, and a reminder of some of the ways that women's lives have changed (more opportunities), and have not changed (harassing male authority figures) over the last 100 plus years.
Finished: 25 July
Pages: 187
I first read Colette when took a class in 20th Century French Literature in translation, offered by the French department at the University of Saskatchewan back in the 1980s. I think that must be why I picked up a second-hand copy of The Claudine Novels at some point, and why I finally pulled it down off the shelf earlier this month when I was looking for something to read.
More or less by coincidence, I also started reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollestonecraft and a book of SF short stories by Judith Merrill at almost the same time. Claudine at School was written in the 1890s, Vindications was written about a hundred years earlier in 1792, while the Judith Merrill short stories were written between the late 1940s and the 1970s. All three are by and about middle class women.
I feel a bit as if I'm starting a "compare and contrast" essay. But perhaps I'll desist, given that I haven't yet finished Vindications or the Merrill stories, and it's been more than 25 years since I wrote my last literary essay. I will say that reading the three books together felt a bit like time travel: as I write about the other books perhaps I'll pull a bit of commentary together.
Of the books, Collette's is not self-consciously a commentary on women and women's lives. This is her first novel, written as a very young married woman, to please a demanding older husband who eventually got the book published under his own name. Her later novels explore women's lives, but this one simply describes the life of a teenaged girl attending her local village school.
Claudine at School is described as "charming" on Wikipedia and in its introduction. And so it is. It's a slice of a lost time, set in a quiet village where a visit from a local politician is enough to justify an all day program of welcoming songs by schoolchildren dressed in their best clothes and speeches by local dignitaries. It's a time when girls from village families might get an education so that they could train as school teachers, girls from not-so-ambitous families might snatch kisses from boys in the forest, while girls from good families like Claudine might go to school solely to keep themselves amused while waiting for their lives to begin. The book's not quaint: the school girls and school teachers leap off the page as real, complicated, squabbling people. And because the book was originally written as soft porn (Colette's husband kept nagging her to make the contents 'hot'), it reads as surprisingly modern. (Lesbians, oh my.)
Would I recommend it? Colette's later books, like The Captive are more interesting. Claudine feels more like backstory, and a reminder of some of the ways that women's lives have changed (more opportunities), and have not changed (harassing male authority figures) over the last 100 plus years.
Tuesday 7 July 2015
The signal and the noise: why so many predictions fail -- but some don't by Nate Silver
Started: May 21, 2015
Finished (ish): 4 July 2015
Pages: 457
There is a genre of book that I tend to pick up in airports. No, not thrillers or romances. Intellectual books of various kinds that pique my interest by addressing something that's top of mind for me. Or at least, they create a top-of-mind subject by virtue of being right in front of me at a time when I know I'm going to be trapped in a chair for hours in the immediate future...albeit without quite enough oxygen for full mental processing. But still.
I picked this one up as a result of a recent visit to Saskatoon. The blurb appealed to me, and work and workish books were on my mind, particularly questions about work-related predictions. I told myself that the book would be interesting, and perhaps even useful.
And it was interesting, if nowhere near as profound as the cover blurb promises. "Could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade." Um...no. Everything momentous in this book is more ably and rigourously covered in Thinking: Fast and Slow. And at least some of the interest of the book comes from factors outside of the direct content of the book itself. But that doesn't mean that the book was dull or pointless. Just not profound.
What do I mean by all of that? And what is the book about?
Nate Silver famously made a 100% correct prediction of the results of the 2012 American presidential election, at a time when pundits were calling the election too close to call and pollsters were suffering public angst about the present and future of political polling. He parlayed that success into this book, which discusses the art and science of prediction by examining its successes and failures in a number of different fields.
What did I learn from the book? The coolest thing is that for the first time, I feel that I have some understanding of Bayesian statistics. Thank you Nate Silver. I've heard Bayesian statistics discussed in passing many times, without really knowing what was meant. Silver not only explains what they are, he illustrates how they are used and why they are significant. It's not like Silver invented Bayes Theorem, but good communications skills matter, and his explanation is a useful contribution.
I also learnt the current state of a number of fields, like weather prediction and earthquake prediction, which is kind of interesting, if not life-changing.
But part of the interest of the book comes out of my 'meta-learning'. Silver talks about himself and his own experiences with prediction throughout the book. Don't blame Silver: it's a modern non-fiction book style to write about yourself while you write about your subject. But one of the distracting side-effects of this style is that I felt that I was learning about Nate Silver as I read, and what I primarily learnt was that Nate Silver is smart, opportunistic, and ultimately kind of shallow.
No, I'm not sure why that really matters. But Silver has apparently built his career by learning something about Bayesian reasoning and the kind of decision-making fallacies that we are all prone to (as described in Thinking: Fast and Slow), and then finding fields that are under-serviced in terms of the rigorous application of these principles to prediction. He's helped develop a program that took a new approach to predicting the performance of baseball players, he made a bunch of money in the great internet poker boom in the mid-2000s, and after that crashed he focused on poll-based political predictions.
So, while the book is interesting, it isn't profound or life-changing, or really applicable to ones' own life circumstances. A 7 out of 10, maybe?
Finished (ish): 4 July 2015
Pages: 457
There is a genre of book that I tend to pick up in airports. No, not thrillers or romances. Intellectual books of various kinds that pique my interest by addressing something that's top of mind for me. Or at least, they create a top-of-mind subject by virtue of being right in front of me at a time when I know I'm going to be trapped in a chair for hours in the immediate future...albeit without quite enough oxygen for full mental processing. But still.
I picked this one up as a result of a recent visit to Saskatoon. The blurb appealed to me, and work and workish books were on my mind, particularly questions about work-related predictions. I told myself that the book would be interesting, and perhaps even useful.
And it was interesting, if nowhere near as profound as the cover blurb promises. "Could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade." Um...no. Everything momentous in this book is more ably and rigourously covered in Thinking: Fast and Slow. And at least some of the interest of the book comes from factors outside of the direct content of the book itself. But that doesn't mean that the book was dull or pointless. Just not profound.
What do I mean by all of that? And what is the book about?
Nate Silver famously made a 100% correct prediction of the results of the 2012 American presidential election, at a time when pundits were calling the election too close to call and pollsters were suffering public angst about the present and future of political polling. He parlayed that success into this book, which discusses the art and science of prediction by examining its successes and failures in a number of different fields.
What did I learn from the book? The coolest thing is that for the first time, I feel that I have some understanding of Bayesian statistics. Thank you Nate Silver. I've heard Bayesian statistics discussed in passing many times, without really knowing what was meant. Silver not only explains what they are, he illustrates how they are used and why they are significant. It's not like Silver invented Bayes Theorem, but good communications skills matter, and his explanation is a useful contribution.
I also learnt the current state of a number of fields, like weather prediction and earthquake prediction, which is kind of interesting, if not life-changing.
But part of the interest of the book comes out of my 'meta-learning'. Silver talks about himself and his own experiences with prediction throughout the book. Don't blame Silver: it's a modern non-fiction book style to write about yourself while you write about your subject. But one of the distracting side-effects of this style is that I felt that I was learning about Nate Silver as I read, and what I primarily learnt was that Nate Silver is smart, opportunistic, and ultimately kind of shallow.
No, I'm not sure why that really matters. But Silver has apparently built his career by learning something about Bayesian reasoning and the kind of decision-making fallacies that we are all prone to (as described in Thinking: Fast and Slow), and then finding fields that are under-serviced in terms of the rigorous application of these principles to prediction. He's helped develop a program that took a new approach to predicting the performance of baseball players, he made a bunch of money in the great internet poker boom in the mid-2000s, and after that crashed he focused on poll-based political predictions.
So, while the book is interesting, it isn't profound or life-changing, or really applicable to ones' own life circumstances. A 7 out of 10, maybe?
Thursday 18 June 2015
Adventures in time and space with Max Merriwell by Pat Murphy
Started: June 12
Finished: June 17
Pages: 287
Do you like your fiction "meta"? Adventures in time and space with Max Merriwell may take the "meta" cake. Pat Murphy was so dedicated to telling this story of fiction, reality, fictional reality and quantum possibility that she wrote two other novels under pseudonyms (There and Back Again "by Max Merriwell", and Wild Angel "by Mary Maxwell") to support it! Or at least she tried: apparently her publishers insisted that those two books appear under her own name. But the earlier novels get their "proper" attribution in Adventures, and Murphy gets her revenge: Adventures features two characters named "Pat Murphy", neither of whom is a self-portrait.
That gives you a flavour of the book, as does the fact that both Max Merriwell and Mary Maxwell both appear as characters, and Susan, a character in Adventures, reads both There and Back Again and Wild Angel during the course of the novel.
Whew. That was sufficiently self-referential that it was difficult to express clearly. I'm sure that Murphy had even greater difficulties keeping it all clear in the novel itself. But she manages: the book comes across as a romp.
Pat Murphy's day job is as a science writer at the Exploratorium. She's written a Nebula-award winning novel (Falling Woman), and is also notable as one of founders of the James Tiptree, Jr award for fiction. If this novel is any indication, she is also likely to be a lot of fun at a party. Or maybe not: maybe we should imagine her as a dour recluse, to make her as unlike as possible to her fiction. I suspect she'd enjoy that.
Finished: June 17
Pages: 287
Do you like your fiction "meta"? Adventures in time and space with Max Merriwell may take the "meta" cake. Pat Murphy was so dedicated to telling this story of fiction, reality, fictional reality and quantum possibility that she wrote two other novels under pseudonyms (There and Back Again "by Max Merriwell", and Wild Angel "by Mary Maxwell") to support it! Or at least she tried: apparently her publishers insisted that those two books appear under her own name. But the earlier novels get their "proper" attribution in Adventures, and Murphy gets her revenge: Adventures features two characters named "Pat Murphy", neither of whom is a self-portrait.
That gives you a flavour of the book, as does the fact that both Max Merriwell and Mary Maxwell both appear as characters, and Susan, a character in Adventures, reads both There and Back Again and Wild Angel during the course of the novel.
Whew. That was sufficiently self-referential that it was difficult to express clearly. I'm sure that Murphy had even greater difficulties keeping it all clear in the novel itself. But she manages: the book comes across as a romp.
Pat Murphy's day job is as a science writer at the Exploratorium. She's written a Nebula-award winning novel (Falling Woman), and is also notable as one of founders of the James Tiptree, Jr award for fiction. If this novel is any indication, she is also likely to be a lot of fun at a party. Or maybe not: maybe we should imagine her as a dour recluse, to make her as unlike as possible to her fiction. I suspect she'd enjoy that.
Thursday 4 June 2015
D.A. by Connie Willis
Started: 1 June 2015
Finished: 1 June 2015
Pages: 76
D.A. is a YA novelette.
It was way too tempting to describe the book this way: first of all for the acronymitis (too many years in high tech have made me far too susceptible), and for the excuse to use jargon.
For the benefit of those not familiar with SF fiction prize categories, I didn't make up "novelette". Novelettes are works of fiction between 30-70 pages long. Novellas are their slightly longer siblings, ranging from 70-160 pages. Technically, D.A. may count as a Young Adult novella rather than a novelette, but I'd have to do a word count to be sure as D.A. does include pictures.
Now that I have that out of the way, what did I make of D.A.?
D.A. tells the story of a teenager who gets accepted into the insanely elite and competitive Space Academy....even though she didn't apply. "Why would I apply?" she asks. "I've told you a hundred times that I don't want to go into space. I want to go to UCLA."
How is it? I think it would be great for a young teenager /tween who had some interest in science fiction. It's light, it's fun, and it was written by Connie Willis, who has 11 Hugo awards and 7 Nebula awards proving that she knows how to write. For an adult, it's a perfectly acceptable brief entertainment. After all, when's the last time you read a book with pictures?
Finished: 1 June 2015
Pages: 76
D.A. is a YA novelette.
It was way too tempting to describe the book this way: first of all for the acronymitis (too many years in high tech have made me far too susceptible), and for the excuse to use jargon.
For the benefit of those not familiar with SF fiction prize categories, I didn't make up "novelette". Novelettes are works of fiction between 30-70 pages long. Novellas are their slightly longer siblings, ranging from 70-160 pages. Technically, D.A. may count as a Young Adult novella rather than a novelette, but I'd have to do a word count to be sure as D.A. does include pictures.
Now that I have that out of the way, what did I make of D.A.?
D.A. tells the story of a teenager who gets accepted into the insanely elite and competitive Space Academy....even though she didn't apply. "Why would I apply?" she asks. "I've told you a hundred times that I don't want to go into space. I want to go to UCLA."
How is it? I think it would be great for a young teenager /tween who had some interest in science fiction. It's light, it's fun, and it was written by Connie Willis, who has 11 Hugo awards and 7 Nebula awards proving that she knows how to write. For an adult, it's a perfectly acceptable brief entertainment. After all, when's the last time you read a book with pictures?
Monday 1 June 2015
Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik
Started: 15 April
Finished: 24 May
Pages: 252
Being interrupted is bad. This isn't a long book, and it isn't a difficult book. But for one reason or another my reading of it was interrupted a couple of times. With a novel, that can mean feeling like I've wandered back into a conversation with strangers. With a nonfiction book it just means a curiously disrupted perception of the the book's contents.
So, apologies to the book, and its author. It deserved better.
Stuff Matters belongs to the now-venerable tradition of nonfiction works begun by Much Depends on Dinner back in 1986. The author begins with a simple everyday artefact -- in this case, a photo of himself sitting on a roof patio -- and devotes a chapter to exploring the history, sociology, and science of items within that artefact. Mark Miodownik is a materials scientist, so his focus is on exploring the materials that make up everyday objects: things like paper, concrete, chocolate, and china.
Stuff Matters won the 2014 Winton Prize for Science Books. The judges said "This brilliantly written book is a fresh take on material science that makes even the most everyday stuff exciting and interesting. It demonstrates just how creative and ingenious the human mind can be in its ability to incorporate them into our lives.” Personally, I think the primary reason Miodownik won, and the primary virtue of the book is how imaginative he is. Each material he discusses is treated in a different way. For example, he wrote a film script for the "plastic" chapter.
The only "but" to this book is that if you have a science background, you might find the contents a little bit basic. Not that the science is less than rigourous--I definitely learned things--but that as a science reader you may have encountered some of the contents before in different contexts. But hey, I picked up fun facts that I was able to insert into conversation twice within a couple of weeks. And the book is entertaining and engaging, and might just get you interested in the science of the "stuff" that surrounds us all.
Finished: 24 May
Pages: 252
Being interrupted is bad. This isn't a long book, and it isn't a difficult book. But for one reason or another my reading of it was interrupted a couple of times. With a novel, that can mean feeling like I've wandered back into a conversation with strangers. With a nonfiction book it just means a curiously disrupted perception of the the book's contents.
So, apologies to the book, and its author. It deserved better.
Stuff Matters belongs to the now-venerable tradition of nonfiction works begun by Much Depends on Dinner back in 1986. The author begins with a simple everyday artefact -- in this case, a photo of himself sitting on a roof patio -- and devotes a chapter to exploring the history, sociology, and science of items within that artefact. Mark Miodownik is a materials scientist, so his focus is on exploring the materials that make up everyday objects: things like paper, concrete, chocolate, and china.
Stuff Matters won the 2014 Winton Prize for Science Books. The judges said "This brilliantly written book is a fresh take on material science that makes even the most everyday stuff exciting and interesting. It demonstrates just how creative and ingenious the human mind can be in its ability to incorporate them into our lives.” Personally, I think the primary reason Miodownik won, and the primary virtue of the book is how imaginative he is. Each material he discusses is treated in a different way. For example, he wrote a film script for the "plastic" chapter.
The only "but" to this book is that if you have a science background, you might find the contents a little bit basic. Not that the science is less than rigourous--I definitely learned things--but that as a science reader you may have encountered some of the contents before in different contexts. But hey, I picked up fun facts that I was able to insert into conversation twice within a couple of weeks. And the book is entertaining and engaging, and might just get you interested in the science of the "stuff" that surrounds us all.
Sunday 24 May 2015
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
Started: May 8
Finished: May 12
Pages: 356
Ancillary Justice won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Ann Leckie, which is quite an accomplishment for a first novel. Ancillary Sword is the sequel.
Has there every been an outstanding "first" book that was outdone by its sequel? That's an interesting question, and not one that I propose to answer from my own reading experience.
But in thinking about the question, I was reminded of Scott McCloud's take on creativity and "great works" from Understanding Comics. He suggests that are two types of great artists: those whose greatness comes from mastery, and those whose greatness comes from innovation. The first type of artist creates their greatest works in the fullness of their careers. Earlier works are like practice runs for their greatest work, which comes as the artist develops full mastery of message and technique. The second type of artist is a revelation: they seem to spring from nowhere to astonish the world. They often provide something radically new. Subsequent work by that artist may not seem as original or as interesting, and later artists may well build on that innovative artitst's originality,and create more polished versions of what made the innovator great. There are innumerable examples of artists of type 2: Jane Austen, for one.
In a science fictional context, any author who wins the Nebula and the Hugo with their first novel must be in category 2, right? They must be an innovator. But ......what was new about Ancillary Justice? The main character of that novel is an embodied artificial intelligence: a starship's intelligence in a human body. This isn't novel. If I could be bothered to pick through the stacks on the shelf behind me I could give you the title and author of a book more than 15 years old that features an artificial intelligence that assumes human form. (Although that info would definitely be a spoiler for the book). Is the universe that Leckie creates novel? Nope, it's a standard space opera universe: a multi-solar-system human empire with faster-than-light travel and powerful and inscrutable aliens on the fringe.
So, why did Leckie win? Basically, good writing. She uses a limited viewpoint/unreliable narrator to tell her story, while doing a whole lot of showing rather than telling. She provides a novel viewpoint on the story she chooses to tell, and animates her plot, characters, and themes in a compelling way.
Ancillary Sword continues the story told in the award-winning Ancillary Justice, to much the same standard as the first book.
Does either book provide anything totally new? Nope. Are the books interesting? Yes. Are they good reads? Yes again. So while I wouldn't consider either one a classic, I was happy to read them. I'd recommend Ancillary Justice to any SF reader.
Ancillary Sword continues the story told in the award-winning Ancillary Justice, to much the same standard as the first book.
Does either book provide anything totally new? Nope. Are the books interesting? Yes. Are they good reads? Yes again. So while I wouldn't consider either one a classic, I was happy to read them. I'd recommend Ancillary Justice to any SF reader.
Relaunched book blog
Yes, I've decided to relaunch the book blog, but I'm going to do it a little differently than I did it before. Rather than blogging about every single book I read, I'm going to write about some of them. Most of them even. But I'm going to feel free to omit talking about anything that I didn't find particularly interesting. I may periodically list the ones that come "between" the books I actually review though.
In that spirit, I've read the following books since I last reviewed one:
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
May 2015
Pages: 383
The Second Confession by Rex Stout
May 2015
Pages: 197
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (skimmed)
April 2015
Pages: 344
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd
May 14-20
Pages: 329
Late April and May were a stressful time, hence the generally unchallenging comfort reading.
In that spirit, I've read the following books since I last reviewed one:
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
May 2015
Pages: 383
The Second Confession by Rex Stout
May 2015
Pages: 197
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (skimmed)
April 2015
Pages: 344
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd
May 14-20
Pages: 329
Late April and May were a stressful time, hence the generally unchallenging comfort reading.
Wednesday 29 April 2015
11/22/63 by Stephen King
April 2015
Pages:860? (read the ebook version, so I'm not sure of the paper book length)
I've never read a book by Stephen King before -- I'm just not at all interested in horror. But I when I saw the reviews of this one a few years back I was a bit intrigued. As far as I could tell, it was a straight time-travel story that was focused around the Kennedy assassination. It got good reviews. But I was suspicious that it would end up being horror-themed in some way, so I relegated it to the "maybe try it sometime if I can get a copy from the library" category.
I can report that the reviewers didn't omit (much) horror. I suppose the sense of creeping dread and wrongness that the protagonist found endemic to two of the cities he visited might qualify as a horror element, as might the mutilation that another character endures. But King doesn't dwell on either unduly (as I've found in other SF or mysteries with "horror" elements). So the book didn't come across as having a pervasive horror theme.
I can also report that Stephen King is skilful at characterization and plotting. He writes an engaging book. This is not at all surprising -- generally popular authors are popular for a reason. (Although I do wonder about John Grisham).
But, as a time travel story....it's kind of dull. Time travel stories are difficult to do well. The ground is awfully well-trodden. And King doesn't add anything particularly new to the equation. History doesn't want to be changed. Yawn. The past is a different country -- interesting, but King's take on that perspective is banal. Using a white, well-educated middle class man as the viewpoint character made the 1950s/early 60s look awfully "Leave it to Beaver". The book would have been a lot more interesting if his main character had been black. Or even a white woman. Plot points: I had a much more interesting plot twist in mind re: the Yellow Card Man than what King came up with.
Anyway, I did finish the book, though I did do some skipping in the middle sections. It's a pretty good read if you're looking for something long but not too challenging and/or want to learn more about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination.
Pages:860? (read the ebook version, so I'm not sure of the paper book length)
I've never read a book by Stephen King before -- I'm just not at all interested in horror. But I when I saw the reviews of this one a few years back I was a bit intrigued. As far as I could tell, it was a straight time-travel story that was focused around the Kennedy assassination. It got good reviews. But I was suspicious that it would end up being horror-themed in some way, so I relegated it to the "maybe try it sometime if I can get a copy from the library" category.
I can report that the reviewers didn't omit (much) horror. I suppose the sense of creeping dread and wrongness that the protagonist found endemic to two of the cities he visited might qualify as a horror element, as might the mutilation that another character endures. But King doesn't dwell on either unduly (as I've found in other SF or mysteries with "horror" elements). So the book didn't come across as having a pervasive horror theme.
I can also report that Stephen King is skilful at characterization and plotting. He writes an engaging book. This is not at all surprising -- generally popular authors are popular for a reason. (Although I do wonder about John Grisham).
But, as a time travel story....it's kind of dull. Time travel stories are difficult to do well. The ground is awfully well-trodden. And King doesn't add anything particularly new to the equation. History doesn't want to be changed. Yawn. The past is a different country -- interesting, but King's take on that perspective is banal. Using a white, well-educated middle class man as the viewpoint character made the 1950s/early 60s look awfully "Leave it to Beaver". The book would have been a lot more interesting if his main character had been black. Or even a white woman. Plot points: I had a much more interesting plot twist in mind re: the Yellow Card Man than what King came up with.
Anyway, I did finish the book, though I did do some skipping in the middle sections. It's a pretty good read if you're looking for something long but not too challenging and/or want to learn more about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination.
Sunday 26 April 2015
Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross AND Debt: the First 5000 Years by David Greaber
Dec-January 2015
Debt: the first 5000 years.
Pages:462
April 2015
Neptune's Brood
Pages: 352
What does a space opera written by one of the most prolific and popular SF authors have in common with a weighty discourse on the nature of debt written by an anthropologist (who also happened to be an active participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011)? Quite a lot actually. In the tradition of the best SF, Charles Stross uses Neptune's Brood both to entertain and to explore some Big Ideas -- in this case, the economic ideas explored in Debt.
So, what are those ideas? I picked up Debt in the Saskatoon airport on the way back from a visit to my Mom in late November 2014, and started reading it on the plane. I called it weighty, but that description doesn't really do it justice. Debt is actually quite readable and engaging, especially in its opening chapters where it answers a fundamental question. Where did money come from? That is, how and why was money invented?
What do you think?
Nope, you're almost certainly wrong, particularly if you took Economics 101.
The standard account dates back to Adam Smith, who told a "just so" story to explain why money was invented. I'm sure you're familiar with it. The story goes something like this. Back in some unspecified "olden times", people farmed and fished and made their own clothing. But sometimes a farmer would need something that he didn't have himself or couldn't make for himself. So off to market he would go to barter for the goods he needed. But bartering was difficult and awkward. Farmer A had chickens, but what he really needed was leather for shoes. Farmer B had leather. If Farmer B needed chickens, then all was well. He'd negotiate with Farmer A and come to an agreement on how many chickens to exchange his leather for. But what if Farmer B didn't need chickens? What if Farmer B needed seed corn? Or a calf? Conundrum. Would Farmer A first have to find Farmer C, who had seed corn and needed chickens? What if Farmer C hadn't chosen to go to market on that particular Saturday? Things quickly became complicated, and money was invented as a medium of exchange to work around the obvious difficulties.
All makes sense, right?
Actually not. Anthropologists have been telling economists an inconvenient truth for at least a hundred years. They have never found any human society based on barter, although they have found many societies where money is either never used or is used only for ceremonial exchanges. Money as we know it seems to have been invented....to pay taxes to a strong central government that needs to raise armies or maintain temples and priests. Societies without strong central organization and coercive institutions get along quite happily on informal systems of social debt. Farmer A has known Farmer B all of their mutual lives because they live in the same village. Farmer B will "loan" Farmer A the leather until Farmer A's cow has a calf next spring, at which time Farmer B will get the calf and also owe Farmer A some overage in grain in exchange to make up the difference in agreed value between the leather and the calf. Unless of course Farmer B hates Farmer A's guts because Farmer A's father cheated Farmer B's uncle at competitive hopscotch two seasons ago. In which case Farmer B may well refuse to give the leather to Farmer A, who will have to resort to asking his sister (Farmer C's wife) to talk to her close friend Farmer B's wife to see if there might be some way to get Farmer B to get over his grudge....the point being that until recently, economic exchange was embedded within social exchange. And debt was the glue that held societies together.
Why did Adam Smith invent his story about the genesis of money? What is the impact on societies of moving away from informal debt systems into money economies? How has the meaning and impact of debt changed over time, and how has this played out in various societies over the last 5000 years? For all of that and more, I'd encourage you to read Debt.
Charles Stross did. And he was so taken with the concepts that he plays with them as he tells a story of the adventures of an inter-stellar accountant on a quest to find her missing post-human clone sister. No, it's not A Taxing Woman (the only other piece of fiction I know that features an accountant as its protagonist), but the book is classic Stross, or at least, classic "better Stross". There are interesting characters, interesting ideas, and a strong plot driving a lot action. It's not as interesting as Glasshouse or Iron Sunrise, but it has more weight and is more entertaining than his Merchant Princes series.
So, could you skip Debt and read Neptune's Brood instead? No, because Debt doesn't really come together as a compelling single narrative about debt and the role of money in societies. So even if he wanted to, Stross couldn't have made that narrative a central part of the story in Neptune's Brood. But in a lot of ways that's okay. Debt is sparking with ideas and will give you lots of unexpected insights into economic and social history. Charles Stross selected the ideas that intrigued him to work into the narrative of Neptune's Brood. Your mileage may vary. Not to mention thatyou might not be as interested in visiting a colony of intelligent squid or travelling with bat-form pirate insurance agents as Stross assumes his readers will be. So if you're interested in debt, I'd suggest you read the non-fiction.
Debt: the first 5000 years.
Pages:462
April 2015
Neptune's Brood
Pages: 352
What does a space opera written by one of the most prolific and popular SF authors have in common with a weighty discourse on the nature of debt written by an anthropologist (who also happened to be an active participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011)? Quite a lot actually. In the tradition of the best SF, Charles Stross uses Neptune's Brood both to entertain and to explore some Big Ideas -- in this case, the economic ideas explored in Debt.
So, what are those ideas? I picked up Debt in the Saskatoon airport on the way back from a visit to my Mom in late November 2014, and started reading it on the plane. I called it weighty, but that description doesn't really do it justice. Debt is actually quite readable and engaging, especially in its opening chapters where it answers a fundamental question. Where did money come from? That is, how and why was money invented?
What do you think?
Nope, you're almost certainly wrong, particularly if you took Economics 101.
The standard account dates back to Adam Smith, who told a "just so" story to explain why money was invented. I'm sure you're familiar with it. The story goes something like this. Back in some unspecified "olden times", people farmed and fished and made their own clothing. But sometimes a farmer would need something that he didn't have himself or couldn't make for himself. So off to market he would go to barter for the goods he needed. But bartering was difficult and awkward. Farmer A had chickens, but what he really needed was leather for shoes. Farmer B had leather. If Farmer B needed chickens, then all was well. He'd negotiate with Farmer A and come to an agreement on how many chickens to exchange his leather for. But what if Farmer B didn't need chickens? What if Farmer B needed seed corn? Or a calf? Conundrum. Would Farmer A first have to find Farmer C, who had seed corn and needed chickens? What if Farmer C hadn't chosen to go to market on that particular Saturday? Things quickly became complicated, and money was invented as a medium of exchange to work around the obvious difficulties.
All makes sense, right?
Actually not. Anthropologists have been telling economists an inconvenient truth for at least a hundred years. They have never found any human society based on barter, although they have found many societies where money is either never used or is used only for ceremonial exchanges. Money as we know it seems to have been invented....to pay taxes to a strong central government that needs to raise armies or maintain temples and priests. Societies without strong central organization and coercive institutions get along quite happily on informal systems of social debt. Farmer A has known Farmer B all of their mutual lives because they live in the same village. Farmer B will "loan" Farmer A the leather until Farmer A's cow has a calf next spring, at which time Farmer B will get the calf and also owe Farmer A some overage in grain in exchange to make up the difference in agreed value between the leather and the calf. Unless of course Farmer B hates Farmer A's guts because Farmer A's father cheated Farmer B's uncle at competitive hopscotch two seasons ago. In which case Farmer B may well refuse to give the leather to Farmer A, who will have to resort to asking his sister (Farmer C's wife) to talk to her close friend Farmer B's wife to see if there might be some way to get Farmer B to get over his grudge....the point being that until recently, economic exchange was embedded within social exchange. And debt was the glue that held societies together.
Why did Adam Smith invent his story about the genesis of money? What is the impact on societies of moving away from informal debt systems into money economies? How has the meaning and impact of debt changed over time, and how has this played out in various societies over the last 5000 years? For all of that and more, I'd encourage you to read Debt.
Charles Stross did. And he was so taken with the concepts that he plays with them as he tells a story of the adventures of an inter-stellar accountant on a quest to find her missing post-human clone sister. No, it's not A Taxing Woman (the only other piece of fiction I know that features an accountant as its protagonist), but the book is classic Stross, or at least, classic "better Stross". There are interesting characters, interesting ideas, and a strong plot driving a lot action. It's not as interesting as Glasshouse or Iron Sunrise, but it has more weight and is more entertaining than his Merchant Princes series.
So, could you skip Debt and read Neptune's Brood instead? No, because Debt doesn't really come together as a compelling single narrative about debt and the role of money in societies. So even if he wanted to, Stross couldn't have made that narrative a central part of the story in Neptune's Brood. But in a lot of ways that's okay. Debt is sparking with ideas and will give you lots of unexpected insights into economic and social history. Charles Stross selected the ideas that intrigued him to work into the narrative of Neptune's Brood. Your mileage may vary. Not to mention thatyou might not be as interested in visiting a colony of intelligent squid or travelling with bat-form pirate insurance agents as Stross assumes his readers will be. So if you're interested in debt, I'd suggest you read the non-fiction.
Back again?
April 2015
Hello Readers
Hello Readers
After a long absence, I'm back. I blogged about every book that I read from March 2012 to March 2013. And after that, at least according to my blog, I planned to blog intermittently. My personal plans were to wrap up a couple of personal projects, and then launch into some other types of writing in parallel with the time and energy freed up from the book reading and blogging.
Sigh. Best laid plans o' Mice and Men....
Well, there were some successes. I did *finally* finish the book of family photos that I slowly built from my maternal grandfather's pictures. And I had copies made for various members of my family. Maybe I can post it at some point, and you can see it too.
And I did draft a submission to the National Energy Board regarding the Kinder Morgan application to twin their existing pipeline and build a new heavy oil terminal at Burnaby Mountain. One day that submission will be a part of the public record, and you can feel free to read it at your leisure. (Sadly, I chose to write about the terminal itself, and the impact of the terminal and increased levels of shipping on the Maplewood Flats wildlife refuge. Which means that the last minute choice by Kinder Morgan to explore redesigning the route through Burnaby Mountain and the terminal itself is directly relevant to my submission -- so I haven't finalized and submitted my comments yet. )
I even prepared and delivered a talk at the CIDM Best Practices conference in September 2014. (Based on my reading of Switch: how to change when change is hard, and the work that I and my colleagues did to implement some of the lessons of the book for a documentation project.)
And I haven't stopped reading.
There conclude the successes. So, back to the blogging, at least intermittently. And welcome to my first blog entry of 2015. Stay tuned for my first online book review since 2013.
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